The worst has happened and you have gotten a serious scratch or dent in your beloved Dodge Ram. It doesn’t have to be a Ram; it could be any car, but you love your car and you want to be able to repair scratches in it from your own garage. What are your Dodge paint options? How do you choose the right one kit, and should you even do it yourself?
Generic Kits
The first option for a paint touch up kit is to go with the generic option. Naturally, these are the cheapest and they can work great. They are especially effective if your scratches really haven’t penetrated the clearcoat and touched the paint job underneath. Even if they have, generic kits are still among your valid Dodge paint options if your car is a “generic” color. The neutral colors, which in the automobile industry are black, white, silver, and gray, are pretty easy to match. Color marketing specialist Nancy Lockhart reports that the number one choice in car color for all of North America ever since 2006 has been white. A generic car touch up paint kit can definitely work if you have one of these neutral colors.
Matching Unique Colors
If your car is some other color than one of these, your Dodge paint options are a bit trickier. In that case, it’s usually a good idea to buy an official Dodge touch up paint kit. This will be carefully and perfectly matched to the original color of your car, so you can be sure that it doesn’t just look like a match in the bottle, but will actually look like a match when it’s on your vehicle. The same holds true whether you are in need of Ford touch up paint, Lexus touch up paint, or a touch up kit for a Honda. These kits will naturally run more expensive than the generic ones.
Color Matching
If you’re very brave and absolutely desperate to save a couple dollars, you can try to match your paint. It’s not impossible, but you do have to be quite careful. Every car will have a color code to let color mixers know the precise makeup of your car’s color. The trick is finding this code. In many cars, it’s written on the driver-side door jamb. If not, here are a few other places to look:
- Sun visor on the right side
- On the radiator
- In the glove box
- On the spare tire wheel well
- On the trunk lid
- On the radiator
- Under your driver’s seat
- On the firewall
- Behind the middle console.
What Scratches Can I Fix?
It’s important to be realistic about what you’re actually going to be able to fix on your car. Most cars have a clear coat that is between 1.5 and 2 mL stick. This protects the paint underneath, and scratches that only go through the clearcoat are pretty easy to fix. In fact, they can often be buffed out. Once the scratch gets into the paint, things get more difficult. The auto industry classifies scratches into five different levels: 1A, 1B, 2, 3, and 4. If you have a scratch of 1A to 2 you can probably fix it yourself if you know what you’re doing. Anything more and you’ll almost certainly need a professional.
How Did it Happen?
Sometimes it seems like we get out there and there are suddenly scratches all over our car with no explanation. You’re looking for Dodge paint options, but you have no idea why it’s necessary. According to a survey by Direct Line, more than half of all car damage is scratched paint or from a keying incident. One of the most common ways that cars get scratched is when people try to balance something heavy against the car while fumbling with the keys. Whipping against a branch along the side of the road is another common cause of scratches. Our kids and their bike handles are also highly likely to scratch up our cars.
If you are in need of Dodge paint options or any other type of car paint, assess what you need, look for just the right match, and if it’s too deep have an expert work on it.
